Psyched! Dartmouth High students shine at Psychology Fair

DARTMOUTH — Beyond the fascinating projects that students come up with, there's a psychology behind Dartmouth High School's Psychology Fair.

JOHN GARCIA

DARTMOUTH — Beyond the fascinating projects that students come up with, there's a psychology behind Dartmouth High School's Psychology Fair.

"It's for other students to come in and learn about psychology," said teacher Lynn Pleiss, the woman behind the sixth annual fair, held earlier this month at the high school.

The event featured projects dealing with topics as diverse as mind-reading, simulations of drunkenness, and student-programmed computer games. The projects were done by students in the Advanced Placement Psychology Course.

Pleiss explained each student was assigned a project based on a concept taught in the course; she noted that their work also helped them prepare for their midterm tests.

She said they benefitted, as well, from the opportunity to share their knowledge with their classmates, parents, and other visitors. And they had plenty of knowledge to share.

Pleiss said the curriculum is identical to what is taught on a college level and students can actually earn college credit if they score high enough on the Advanced Placement Exam.

Senior Noah Eadie, who hopes to become a game designer, said what he has learned in the class will certainly help him in that career. "Psychology is a big part of game design," he said.

He put those skills to use for the project, programming three different computer games demonstrating how people react to information given to them. One of the games provided clues on how to win in the instructions, but surrounded that info with a long block of unrelated text.

Eadie pointed out that the superfluous information caused most players to miss the important advice and struggle with the game. "That's way too much to read," he said.

Senior Abigail Reid ran an experiment on the concept of conditioning. Subjects were instructed to clap their hands whenever she turned on a set of lights, with Reid ringing a bell each time.

After performing the task several times, she would ring the bell without turning on the lights, causing most subjects to clap anyway.

She said that some people who were already familiar with the concept were able to resist being conditioned.

"They don't want to be the dogs," she said, referring to the famous experiment where Ivan Pavlov conditioned dogs to salivate whenever they heard a bell ring.

Senior Cecilia Elhaddad and Junior Arialle Weinstein, who did a project on "Sensation and Perception," demonstrated the concept of ESP, which they stressed has not been scientifically proven.

They laid several playing cards out on a table. Elhaddad instructed subjects to pick a card while Weinstein was out of the room. When Weinstein returned, she would correctly identify which card had been selected, claiming she had been able to read her partner's mind.

Most participants reacted in shock, they said. "We really get to freak people out," Elhaddad said. She added that many subjects tried to figure out how they had been able to pull the trick off. (They weren't divulging their secret.)

Meanwhile, seniors Meredith Vandal, Sari Oliver and Olivia Martins set up a series of demonstrations showing the effects drugs, alcohol, stress, and lack of sleep can have on a person's health.

Among their demos was a set of "beer goggles," glasses that simulate the impaired vision created by alcohol. Visitors had the opportunity to put on the goggles and then try to walk in a straight line.

Oliver said most people had difficulty walking with the goggles, though children tended to do better than adults.

Pleiss said some of her former students have gone on to work in the field of psychology and several students in her current class hope to follow in those footsteps.

Senior Ellen Marshall is among them. She said she signed up for the course in the hopes that it would help prepare her for college. "I figured it would be a good stepping stone," she said.

Pleiss said she was delighted by the quality of work on display.

"They make me want to teach for another hundred years," she said.

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